The straight down to turn 11 at Suzuka isn’t long, and the corner leading onto it, is quite fast, so, why can overtaking happen? Meanwhile, the straight of Abu Dhabi is over a kilometer long, so why doesn’t any overtaking happen there?

Truth is, having medium/faster corners before straights are better for overtaking than slower corners. Degner curve is perfect for such. If you have a harpin before a straight, the traction difference is simply too great.

That’s also the reason to why despite the fact Shanghai and Yas Marina have similar length straights, a lot more overtaking happens in the harpin at China than anywhere in Abu Dhabi. Reason? The exit corner before the straight.

I have been saying it for years. It is very clear to one if he has Racing Simulation experience. The corners at either end of a straight can’t be too tight or they become too traction dependent. Too fast and they become too aero dependent. Medium speed is the way to go.

Hairpin-straight-hairpin for overtaking is a common misconception. The car behind can only get close in the braking, but obviously loses alot of ground accelerating out of a slow corner to the car infront. It needs the whole straight just to close up the space it lose in the previous slow corner. End result? Overtaking very rarely or doesn’t happen at all.

But when a medium speed corner is followed by a straight. That is were the most overtaking happen. A1 Ring, Interlagos, New Hockenheim… you need some kind of medium speed corner before the straight. It allows the car behind to stay closer, then after a hairpin. The driver behind also has a visual reference point from the car infront, and with the right line and a good exit its easier to overtake.

Another one of the reasons is that having a medium speed corner before a long straight is better is because slipstream is much more powerful at high speed than at slow speed. So it’s better that cars are at high speed since the start of the straight.

The best combination for overtaking is:
Medium corner → long straight → hairpin.

The big question is: how can a so-called engineer/architect, who is internationally regarded in the field and makes huge amounts of money with this, not see this after almost a dozen failures? Tilke needs a major paradigm shift or — preferably — disappear from circuit design altogether.

The car in front just pulls away on acceleration on corners like the one before the Abu Dhabi back straight. To be honest, it’s a reason I’m quite pensive on the new COTA track. The corner leading onto the back straight… slow hairpin.

As was pointed out after last year’s inaugural Indian Grand Prix, which has very wide entrances to its corners, having a wide exit to a corner is just as crucial to overtaking because it allows drivers to take different lines through it and then line up a move on the following straight. I think that’s one reason why having hairpins before long straights does not result in much passing, as everyone is more or less forced to follow the same line, and the car in front will be able to accelerate earlier and maintain their advantage until the next corner.

Regardless of Hermann Tilke’s circuit-designing ability, or lack of it, what really surprises me is that he’s the only one in the game. Why does no-one else ever get approached? A bit of competition between two designers could be a good thing, making both strive to produce more exciting tracks and secure their future employment. I can only assume it’s written into the contracts that new circuits sign.

Another problem is that all his tracks have an endless straight, but the rest of the track is full of slow corners, so the cars never reach a high enough speed, because of all the aero. He really has to stop putting a bit of everything in his designs; specialize them, like a Monza, a Francorchamps or a Monaco, because his tracks are not good at anything.

I would gladly take on the challenge of designing a new track, I’m sure many would, but there’s obviously a lot of politics going on in the decision making. There’s always plans ready for a track before any of us hear about a new potential location anyways :(

On top of having medium corners before a long straight finished with a harpin, I also feel that having a moderate kink a hundred meters before the harpin, going in the opposite direction of the final harpin could also not only improve overtaking numbers, but also the excitement of overtaking. This is because, this kink allows different racing lines to be taken through the section

That is, a kink in one direction, and short distance afterwards, turn in the other direction, and on a short straight, you can make overtaking opportunities even better and more challenging, to both attack and defend.

Like we have at Suzuka, before the Kobayashi harpin, in which Perez first pulled a banzai on Hamilton that worked, not so much the second try.

That is, a kink in one direction, and short distance afterwards, turn in the other direction, and on a short straight, you can make overtaking opportunities even better and more challenging, to both attack and defend.

The corner that’s just popped into my head is the last corner from Istanbul, where the racing line from the previous corner doesn’t use up all of the track. If you use all of the track, then you can surprise people on the inside. As I’ve heard somewhere, it’s called ‘the typical Irvine move.’

No, the reason why they’ve failed is because it is impossible to follow another car too closely due to all the dirty air coming off it.

Why? Because dirty air hampers downforce on the car right? Well, cars didn’t have any trouble following each other closely through Degner curve. Problem is, like Korea, India, and Abu Dhabi just to name a few; while the former two are good circuits IMO, it’s the fact that a >1.0 km straight is useless if the entry is a harpin. The traction difference between the cars is simply to great out of the exit. Bahrain, Turkey and China have/had faster corners to enter the main straight, and as we saw, overtaking was more common than on the previous Tilke circuits I’ve listed.

Remember the Korean GP last year? Webber was always very close behind Hamilton through the final two high-speed corners, and was even able to pull a pass against Hamilton on the much shorter pits straight. Why wasn’t he able to even get along side Lewis on the longest, 1.1 km straight between turns 2 and 3? Because the Mclaren would simply disappear after the harpin due earlier traction out of the corner.

Altering car regulations will do nothing to help as the car behind cannot accelerate before the car in front. This is entirely a traction problem and is hardly related to dirty air or a car’s aerodynamics. Surely you don’t move before the car in front does at a traffic light? The problem is that new circuits such as COTA continue to have this hairpin-straight-hairpin sequence yet none of the ‘designers’ seem to have realised it is not conducive to overtaking.